Revelation - Letter to a Friend (8)

 

“It [Revelation] is John’s readers’ concrete, day-to-day world seen in heavenly and eschatological perspective. As such its function…is to counter the Roman imperial view of the world, which was the dominant ideological perception of their situation that John’s readers naturally tended to share. Revelation counters that false view of reality by opening the world to divine transcendence.” (The Theology of the Book of Revelation, Richard Bauckham, page 8, italics mine).

 

What is our current “imperial view of the world” in the United States?

 

Are we willing, in Christ, to look in the mirror? Are we willing to consider Babylon of the Bible, of Revelation chapters 17 and 18?

 

Are we willing to take a good look at the beasts of Daniel and Revelation?

 

Are we willing to “see” the world as God sees the world, are we willing to see the world through the images that God gives us in Daniel, Zechariah, and Revelation?

 

“Seeing” can be difficult when we are comfortable, as Bauckham writes concerning the churches of Revelation, “Many were affluent and compromising with the oppressive system” (page 15).

 

Many churches today are doing more than compromising with the imperial worldview, they are stridently promoting it and attacking those who question their promiscuity. They are assisting the Imperial Cult in its assimilation of so-called Christianity, they are placing themselves and their people in the service of the very Beast who is attempting to destroy the image of the Lamb on the Cross by turning it into the image of another beast who kills, devours, and destroys. Let us make no mistake, the cult has many forms, and it adopts those forms as a chameleon changes colors – some forms practice overt destruction, other forms are covert – they range across the political, national, economic, social, and theological spectrum – only Jesus, only Jesus, protects us…and we are to follow only Him, the Lamb of God.

 

When the gods of war assimilate the Word of God into their propaganda, when they do just what Satan did with Jesus in the Wilderness by quoting Scripture, if we do not know the Word of God as Jesus did, if we do not know who we are in Christ just as Jesus knew who He was (and is) in the Father, then we will partake of the table of demons and drink their cup (1 Cor. 10:21). Then we will deny the Lord who purchased us.

 

Let us be faithful to the Lamb even unto death, let us overcome by His blood and the Word of our testimony, which is Jesus.

 

How can we deny our dear God, who loved us even when we were His enemies (Rom. 5:1 – 11)? How can we trade our inheritance in Him for an imperial cult?

 

“For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

 

 

The Great Falling Away And Our Great Hope (2)

 

The great falling away and our great hope (2)

 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).

 

“But the wisdom from above [which is Jesus, Col. 2:2-3; 1 Cor. 1:30 -31] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:17 – 18).

 

It is an evil thing when political movements and governments adopt the language of the Bible to propagate their agendas. It is from the abyss of the pit when they ensnare the souls of men in this language, when they deceive those who should know better, when they turn the hearts of those who profess to follow Jesus into their own messengers of hate and destruction. And what can we say when those who are charged with pastoring Christ’s sheep, instead lead them into the darkness of this present evil age?

 

Those who follow the Lamb are not called to kill; they are called to die. We are called, just as the Lamb, to overcome through laying down our lives for others, through offering ourselves to God for the life of others on the altar of the Cross, always the Cross.

 

When we violate this holy Nature which has been placed within us in our relationship with Jesus Christ, we repudiate Him, we reject our Great High Priest, we trample the Cross and our calling, we reject the Way of the Father (which is Jesus Christ) for the poisonous ways of the pit, we exchange the air of the heavenly for the noxious fumes of hell.

 

I suppose there are no words for all this, it is too incredible, but there are the images of Revelation, the images of the unthinkable, the indescribable – these images from hell ought to be worth thousands of warnings. Yet, when we lose our ear to hear the Spirit, we also lose our sight, our center of gravity in Christ, and we can no longer think or see clearly.

 

And no wonder, for not having “received the love of the truth…God sends upon us a deluding influence so that we will believe what is false, so that we may be judged who do not believe the truth but take pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thess. 2:10 – 12).

 

“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21).

 

We think we can, otherwise we would not see the wholesale adoption and endorsement of political, social, national, and military evil by much of the professing church that we see.

 

We, who are called to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29; 12:1 – 2), are now being transformed into the image of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

 

How ironic that the image of gold of Daniel 3 has reappeared in our own time. At least in Daniel 3 there were those who were found faithful. What about today?

 

What about me?

 

What about you?